Why didn't you wait for me? Why didn't you come to me?
She'd had no answer for that; her condition had not been conducive to explaining her life to him.
If you're going to do this on a regular basis, I'm going to have to tap into a supply of good stimulants.
Oh, who fucking asked you? That had spilled out of her, more like vomit than words.
I'm a fucking volunteer.
Didn't your mother ever tell you never to fucking volunteer?
Jesus! He'd pounded the steering wheel of the rental with both fists, making the whole vehicle shake like the piece of shit it was. What does it take? What does it fucking take?
She glanced at the bedroom again. What does it take? Well, for starters, how does forty-seven miles of barbed wire sound? Just for starters. We'll get to the really lethal stuff later. Because we do what we do, and we do it because we can.
Suddenly she felt ashamed of herself, for that and for Loophead. I don't know what you did to those people, but they never want to see you again.
I told them not to do it. I didn't think I was toxed, I didn't feel toxed. I didn't feel anything.
Hadn't sounded like much of a defense then, and it didn't now. What she'd done to them. She knew what she'd done to them. She'd taken them hard, and manhandled them, each and all together. She hadn't waited for them to give it up, she'd squeezed it out of them, and when they'd given it all, she'd set them back up and squeezed out some more, running over them, shaking them, doing the sound and the music to them, not with them. She hadn't been a synner with Flavia and Dorcas and Tom and Claudio, but something altogether different-
She looked at the blank monitor screen again, and for a moment her mind made her see phantom patterns still moving on it.
Yah, we do what we do, and we do it because we can, and where did you learn to do a thing like that?
"Little Jesus Jump-Up," she muttered. She knew where Mark was, and she knew where Valjean was, and she knew where the video was, in the pipe, out there in release, it had been released-
She hesitated for a moment, looking back at the bedroom. Maybe if they hadn't come back here to Mark's own apartment, she'd have gone in and woken him up long ago. But as he'd said, he didn't know where she lived, and he hadn't wanted to drive all the way to Reseda. Next time the Hollywood-Sheriott for sure.
Sure.
It's okay, hotwire, she thought. You don't have to volunteer anymore.
She left a note on the monitor. Gone to get Mark. That would say it to him.
He'd been dreaming that Rivera had sent him down to Medical to get sockets, and they'd been putting them in the hard way, using spikes and drills and steam-driven hammers that whistled horribly whenever they hit a trouble spot. He could feel them grinding in, driving all the way down through his skull, his face, his neck, into his body cavity-
Abruptly he raised his aching head and looked around. He was still in the penthouse. The light said daytime. "Fuckin' dream," he muttered, and rubbed his head all over. Had to have been a fucking dream; if Rivera had just had them take him, he'd have awakened in Medical. Maybe.
He caught sight of the empty bottle standing next to the blank monitor and groaned. Shit, he was lucky to be alive. Alcohol was not the way he flew. He had a vague memory of thinking it had been a good idea at the time. Yah. Like putting a shotgun to your face and pulling the trigger with your toe.
The whistles blasted him then, almost knocking him off the chair. The monitor was no longer blank; Mark was staring out from that crazy partial room. In the background the clouds were boiling.
"Door's open, get the fuck out."
"When I'm alive, I'll give it some thought," Keely said. "I'm not-"
"I couldn't stick here waiting for you to come to," Mark went on abruptly. "You're looking at a message. Don't interrupt. Get the fuck outa here, go down to my pit on the sixteenth floor, hack the lock, rip the fucking wires right outa my head. Now."
Keely made a face. "What?"
"You heard me. You rip the fucking wires outa my head now. Fast. The old meat's gonna stroke out big, and if the Big One gets up the wires into the system, it's all gonna stroke out, it's gonna eat the system alive and everyone connected to it. You got that?"
"Stroke?" Keely said, rubbing his forehead. He felt like he'd had one himself.
"Reference: cerebral vascular accident. Only it's different this time. If it gets into the system and finds someone hooked in with the interface, it'll get them, too. You got that? A contagious stroke, a fucking virus, are you with me yet?"
"Shit." Keely frowned. "Wait a minute… this is a recording?"
"Canned ham. Get the fuck outa here and go down to my pit on the sixteenth floor, hack the lock, rip the wires outa my head. Don't sweat the meat, the meat's over, it's only warm now."
"Meat," said Keely, trying to push his thoughts around in the wreck of his mind.
"Meat, reference: my body. You got that? Get the fuck outa here, go down to my pit on the sixteenth floor, hack the lock, rip the fucking wires outa my head. Or the Big One gets into the system with the little one."
"Jesus. Reference, the little one," Keely begged, not really expecting the program to answer.
"The little one, reference: the stroke I already had. Little thing, no one would have noticed it anyway, but it's already in the system, and it's why I couldn't stay here waiting for you to come to."
"Where the fuck are you now?"
"Fuck if I know, boy. Out in the big system somewhere, the Big Context. Change for the machines. You want to find me after you're out, dial up the access code VM for Visual Mark. Give the password Gina, and I'll know it's you. I'll answer if I can. Door's open, get the fuck out, go down to my pit on the six-"
The image froze and then began to unravel, starting at the top left corner of the screen and working across. It looked as if some invisible creature were chewing it away in little portions. Keely squeezed his eyes shut. Did hallucinations come with a hangover? Or was this Mark's idea of punchy visuals?
When he opened his eyes, half the image had been eaten away; there were slashes through what remained. Keely hit the clear-screen pad. Nothing happened. He pressed recall and replay, tried to raise the dataline menu. Something was actively clawing at the image now, ripping it up in big, messy strokes. He pressed the reset pad to take the unit all the way back to start-up mode. Nothing changed.
The last of the image vanished, and the screen turned a soft greyish white.
"Come on. Is this some kinda fancy demonstration?" Keely said. "You doing this to show me something?" A shapeless spot was darkening in the center of the screen. "You're really still here, aren't you."
Music came up, faint, jangly like machinery, and the shadow in the center of the screen began to pulse and blossom and just as he blinked, he caught-
He shook his head. Strange. All of a sudden he'd dropped a stitch, just lost his line of thought. The screen was full of pulsing shadows. Turning away, he groped for the off pad. Images were flashing in his brain, twisted progressions and distortions that made his headache worse. Something about stones, or clouds… water…
He saw then that he'd been tapping the off panel steadily, but nothing had happened. The shadows kept moving on the screen, insistent, magnetic, demanding, and if he didn't turn his back to them, he was going to drop into a trance again.
But he wasn't an easy subject for hypnosis, he knew that. Except this didn't feel exactly like hypnosis. It felt… ugly. Like something probing him for a weak spot, a secret hurt. But just shadows on a screen?